i'm a php developer , but now i'm facing a problem that i've never faced before. i really want to implement web based email system but i've no experience in building such system. i'd like to get some sources where i can find total tutorial ,steps and scripts to do that.

i'm running a linux machine with redhat 9.0 distribution. i want to implement my webmail system with PHP4,mysql,apache and the imap library of the university of washington.

i'll be so grateful to anyone who knows such sources where i can clear up my minds. my email is : analyse77@yahoo.fr

If you're going to build the whole thing from other peoples' tutorials and scripts anyway, why the hell don't you just use someone else's completely finished webmail system? There are plenty of options. Squirrelmail comes highly recommended.

If you're insistent on doing it yourself (and are, in fact "a php developer" as you claim, and not a newbie-in-disguise), then I recommend that you actually do it all yourself, in which case all you need are the RFCs for POP3 and SMTP. Good luck!

Also you if you use Squirrelmail then you should have knowledge of SMTP and POP3 to customize it to your needs...
If you build from scratch then you have control over your appliction.
You can use Squirrelmail mail API's for your project and other stuff.